iCoconuts
by twowritehands
Summary: When being rich and famous, sailing a boat and writing best-selling novels is easy, it starts feeling like everything else will come as easily. It won't. Love's rarely easy. "Stop throwing coconuts when I'm trying to tell you how I feel!" Seddie. Cibby.
1. Chapter 1

_This is part of the Cabal Mass Posting June 11th. B__e sure to look for postings by many of your favorite Cabal authors this weekend!_

**...**

**AN: it's an overdone story line but hopefully done well. PLEASE review and say what you think!**

Disclaimer: Dan's, not 'Hands.

**...**

Freddie emerged from below deck and received an eyeful of Sam-skin basking in the Caribbean sunlight. She was stretched along the edge of his boat where no one was meant to sit, but where she'd made herself comfortable. Her bikini was mostly strings that were the exact same shade as the bluest water in the world behind her. Her skin was smooth, glistening and darkening beautifully.

He licked his lips and deliberately put his attention on other things—on Carly across the deck sitting in the shade, wearing a more modest red bikini top and white shorts. His dark eyes didn't linger on her long before he was looking at Sam again—but it wasn't her skin he looked at this time. It was her book.

Sam was reading a book.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his double-take and his features slacken in surprise. She smirked, raised her sunglasses. "Gotta problem, Benson?"

"Not used to seeing you with a book," he said with a shrug. Now that he thought about it, he knew she read books. Hell, he'd been the one to get her into it. But it was the kind of thing he forgot easily, because whatever reading she'd done since high school, she'd done privately. He hadn't seen her with a book in hand for years.

Across the deck, Carly frowned upon realizing that her friend was a guy. She knew Freddie was a guy, obviously, and it wasn't like it was the first time it was occurring to her. But she was frowning because she was used to seeing Sam read, yet Freddie wasn't. And it was because he was a guy. She'd never thought about it before, but he _wouldn't_ have seen her doing much reading in all of these years, since Sam only ever picked up a book at night before going to bed and Freddie had never been a part of their sleepovers. Sam had packed a whole suitcase of books for this sailing trip. Freddie hadn't been there for that, either. So all this time, he would've had no idea she had such a favorable dimension in her personality.

Huh. Perspective.

The tube of sunscreen farted as she filled her palm with it and the lotion was cool as she smeared it into her long legs.

Freddie asked Sam to move so that she wouldn't be sent overboard by the sail swinging around as he did his sailor things. Sam closed her book and hopped down, joined Carly in the shade. She dropped her book on the table between them. It was a hard-back, and heavy. Carly had always been impressed by her lazy friend's appetite for literature; it surpassed her own, which was satisfied by cheap paperback love stories. She had one in her bunk right now—but she wouldn't be bringing it out here to read in the sunlight; its cover was far too embarrassing.

Sam's bikini-matching blue eyes followed Freddie as he pulled on that rope and this one and cranked that thing and tied this rope to that other thing. He was barefoot and his shirt was unbuttoned showing his sailor muscles. The wind had excited several cowlicks in his hair. Carly pretended not to notice Sam noticing. She cleared her throat. Sam tore her gaze from their friend.

"Nothing," Carly said, though Sam hadn't actually asked anything. She knew that Sam and Freddie were—well, they were stupid. But she didn't want to be the one to tell them that. Between them was something like twelve years of friendship, a handful of kisses, and enough husband and wife bickering to keep real relationship prospects with other people safely at bay, yet still they pretended the other one was nothing more to them than a friend.

Carly thought it was ridiculous, crazy—completely _coconuts_ (she gave herself a little smirk for her location joke). She loved them like they were family, and she wanted them to be happy. But she knew that whatever was between them was a big can of worms and, frankly, she just didn't want to get any of it on her.

They'd figure it out eventually, right?

Sam knew instantly what Carly's chirp of _nothing_ was. She scoffed, "You and your ideas. I think all of this sun has driven you wacko."

Carly laughed. "You mean _coconuts_?"

Sam gave her a sad look, "Oh, no, honey. _How_ are you a successful comedian?"

"Because I think the world is funny," Carly answered, "and the world loves to laugh with me about it."

"No, no, no, you got that wrong. The world likes to laugh _at_ you."

"_With_ me," Carly corrected.

Sam laughed, "Yeah, Carls, sure, _with_ you."

Freddie listened to his friends' banter as Carly continued to defend her ability to make a clever joke while Sam not-so-politely disagreed. He chuckled to himself the whole time. It was precisely this that got them famous, this way they were together. They were opposites: kindness and Harshness. Innocence and Experience. Naivety and Street-Smarts. Yet both were goodhearted, both were witty, and both were beautiful.

Not for the first time, he was acutely aware of how lucky he was to know them. And to be alone on a boat with them—well, maybe he felt lucky about the boat thing where only one of them was concerned. She was pulling her blond hair out of its pony tail and shaking it loose.

"I know _you _don't laugh with me," Carly was saying, "but the rest of the world does."

"Name one person," Sam snorted.

"Gibby!" Carly cried, somewhat heatedly, "Gibby _always_ laughed with me—until _you_ pushed him too far and he left us forever!"

Sam rolled her eyes, didn't make a retort because there was no way to apologize about the whole messy thing that she hadn't already tried, so instead, she pretended there was no mess. She laughed, "Even Gibby would think coconuts was lame."

"He'd chuckle, at _least_." Carly said.

"Hey, Freddicinni," Sam called over to Freddie, "get over here and tell Carly how lame her coconuts joke is."

"I'm a little busy, Sam." Freddie said. Their banter was funny, but sometimes it went on long enough to become a real argument and what with the Gibby-topic on the table it was heading that way. He didn't like to be dragged into it.

"Sure, take _her_ side," Sam scoffed.

"Just because I'm busy doesn't mean I think coconuts is funny." Freddie said as he worked, "It just means I'm busy—sorry, Carls."

"Sure, take _her_ side," Carly said, but with a knowing smile. He really hated her sometimes. He turned his back on them both.

Sam gasped. Swore. Freddie turned again in time to see her pull the top of her bikini back into place. Her clasp had broken. She had things covered—but the lack of support from the malfunctioned swimwear put things in a more natural shape and maybe he _was_ seeing just a little more than usual. A rope slipped out of his hand.

Carly saw his open-mouthed blunder. Suddenly, she stopped trying to help Sam and stood. That smile was back, only now it was on fire with—Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. That was an idea.

Sam had started on her way below deck to change, but Carly bolted and got there first. She shut the door and threw the lock.

"What the fat-cake?" Sam bellowed. With no free hands, she could only kick the door. "What are you doing, Carly?"

There was no answer but a melodic giggle. Sam understood that giggle. She rolled her eyes, and sighed. She was going to get this bikini thing sorted. Then she was going to kick Freddie's teeth in. Then she was going to make Carly pay, _somehow_. Maybe while broadcasting live to the world. Yeah she would—suddenly fingers were catching the loose ends of the bikini clasps and were tugging, tying them together.

She lost her breathe. Then she rammed an elbow back as hard as she could. It connected with his ribs. He lost his breath in a far more painful way, and with a pathetic cry. "I was just trying to help!" he gasped.

He'd managed to tie the knot before she'd punished him. She began making adjustments, getting everything rearranged with the tighter fitting. "Yeah? Who asked you?"

He straightened, his face hardening, "You know, Sam. It's baffling to me how you could think that friends of twelve years need to _wait_ to be asked!"

"First, only nubs actually use the word _baffling_. Second, you are _not_ my friend, Benson."

He groaned, "Oh, right. You just hang around me all the time because I'm so pretty to look at!"

Simultaneously in the following second, they both realized that what he'd meant to be sarcasm was actually true; he wasn't hard to look at, at all, really. Then, in the second following that one, when the awkwardness began, something bad happened. There was a load thud and the boat lurched. No, it stopped moving so suddenly that everything not nailed down on deck lurched—forward.

Sam fell right into Freddie and they both went down hard onto the deck. In the cabin, Carly's scream was muffled. Then there was nothing but water lapping at the sides and wind in the sails which were making lots of creaking and straining noises.

Sam's hair was in Freddie's face. His elbows hurt—he'd landed on them. She lifted her head, a hair toss giving him his field of vision back. Her eyes were wide. "What happened?"

Freddie was already getting up—the gravity of the situation was too much for him to linger on the sensation of her suntan pressed against his—but that hair toss would be coming back to him later, he was vaguely sure of it. Carly came flying out of the cabin, screaming, "What did you guys do?"

"Nothing!" Sam cried. Freddie leaned over board for a look and his suspicion was confirmed, "Butter!" he bellowed. "We hit a sand dune!"

"What?"

"We're grounded by an underwater sand dune." Freddie said and began doing all of those sailor things again. He lowered the sails.

"Shallow water," Sam translated, "you sailed us straight into shallow water?"

"I didn't sail us!" Freddie shot back, "I wasn't steering!"

"Clearly!"

"Wait!" Carly cried. She'd made a complete one-eighty. "It can't be shallow water, I don't see land anywhere!"

"There's land, but it's underwater."

"So we won't drown?" Carly asked.

"No," Freddie said, heading below deck. "I'll radio for help. They'll tow us out."

Sam scoffed, followed, "God, you're such and IDIOT! _Why_ would you stop paying attention to where we're going? Sailboats don't have autopilot, Freddork!"

Freddie's response had its usual bitter edges, "I was helping _you_!"

"You were trying to get lucky."

"Was not!"

"Ya were, too, ya _nub_."

Carly stayed on deck. She was still shaking from the trauma of the boat's abrupt stop. She looked out at all the water—so much water—and reminded herself that the boat wasn't sinking, that it was shallow water, and that people would come get them soon enough. She drew a deep breath. Really, it was no big deal.

Inside the cabin, Freddie and Sam's argument had escalated into screaming. Blame, blame, blame, blah, blah, blah. Carly was listening more to it than anything, so it took a moment for her brain to register what her eyes landed on in the distance—in the direction from which all the wind was coming. The blue was going all grey there and… and… and those were black clouds.

She screamed.

...

Sam couldn't believe she'd ever thought thunder was pretty. It was horrendous. And so was wind. And rain. So much rain.

Lightening.

She had a love hate relationship with lightening. It was three times as frightening as the thunder, but it chased away the darkness—if only for a moment. While it was gone she was certain that the world had broken into pieces by the force of the storm and she wanted the lightening to come back so that she could see the deck of the boat, her friends, and know that they were still alive. But then it did come back with a crack as forks of it spread overhead and she thought she would die.

So she loved it, but she hated it.

The last five hours had been the worst of her life. Carly had alerted them to the coming storm. Freddie had sent out a distress call. All they could do after that was wait for help, and in the meantime ride out the storm. That meant waiting for the storm to come. Sam had thought tropic storms came on all of a sudden like, but this one had seemed to take forever.

It'd stayed over there, lurking like some great cat poised to pounce… waiting… Making them doubt, find false hope that maybe, just maybe, help would come before it did. But help would be coming from the other side of it, from behind it.

Freddie had run around doing a lot of sailor things before eventually strapping them into life jackets and then huddling with them in the cabin around the un-deployed life raft and survival kit. Whatever drive Sam had had to blame him was gone by then. She'd sat quiet like the other two. Waiting.

The sun started to sit by the time it hit.

And now it felt like it'd been pounding on them for hours. At first they might have been in a beach house during a storm… but then the waves, growing bigger as the storm got stronger, rocked them free of the stupid dune and then they had to go out and do sailor things while everything was bobbing and rocking.

Sam was terrified. She and Carly had been given a lesson or two on sailing before going on this trip, but nothing to prepare them for this. Freddie was being amazing, Mr. On Top Of This, but he was just one guy against a freaking hurricane. She pulled and tied and held and prayed and whatever else he told her to do and the whole time the sky shook and broke around them, like it was taking it personally that they just wanted to survive this.

She grew colder and weaker.

The waves grew bigger and darker.

For what felt like the zillionth time, a wave crashed down around them on the deck, its weight and strength was overwhelming and for a petrifying second, Sam thought she wouldn't be able to hold on anymore.

"Deck!" she heard Freddie below.

"What?"

"Get below deck!"

Yes, please. She held out a hand for him to take so they could go. But he ignored it.

"Come on!"

"Go!" he bellowed, giving her a shove. She held her ground as best she could in a storm-tossed boat, knocked his hands away, grabbed his shoulders, but he only shoved her again, "Go!"

Carly grabbed her by the arm, shrieked, "Come on!" and pulled. Another wave crashed onto them, then. This one was stronger than the last. Sam's knees buckled and she washed against the side of the boat with enough force to cause her to swallow a lot of water. Carly lost her grip on Sam's arm.

Hacking up the Caribbean, and blinking salt water from her eyes, Sam looked around. She heard Freddie screaming on the wind. "NOOOOO! CAAARRRRRLEEEEEE!" and the sharp, but horrifyingly distant sound of Carly's scream—but she only heard it for a moment, for the space of one flash of lightening. In the flash, she didn't see Carly on the boat.

Then there was nothing but darkness and the noise of the storm and Freddie's shouts attempting to drown each other out. Suddenly he had her by the shoulders, shook her hard to snap her out of it. Lightening flashed, illuminating his face, which was covered in streaming water and fear. He shouted something and she didn't hear a word of it.

Then another wave hit and the boat flipped over.

...

_~The CABAL~_

_aussiemma, axel100, BaalRules, BoxOfTrinkets, boxofpiglets, Champagne Scene, Coyote Laughs, Deviocity, Hartful13, hidden-in-the-pictures, ItalianBabexo8, iCabal, iCarlyangst, iLuvNathanKrEsS, JamesTheGreater, KingxLeon21, Myjumpingsocks, ober22, pairababes, pearlbutton328, Pieequals36, pigwiz, Tech-Man, The Earl of Sandwich, twowritehands, Virgoleo23, Waffles Of Doom, xXACCEBXx_

_From fluff, to face melting angst._  
><em>The Cabal authors produce the best.<em>

**A/N: please review, it makes a ****writer ever so happy :)**


	2. Chapter 2

Carly wasn't on the boat.

Not. On. The boat.

It'd been a little hard to tell for a moment—she was no wetter or disoriented than when she'd been on the deck—but the giveaway was having nothing, _nothing_, to hold onto anymore. Except the thing in her hand; what was this? A handle, something big and rectangular—the life-raft!

Numb fingers fumbled, tugged at the cord. It took two pulls, but finally the thing deployed and Carly climbed aboard. There. Not drowning anymore. But the fight wasn't over. Rain still pelted her mercilessly, and the waves threatened to turn the little raft over like a flapjack, just up and over with a merry whistle, never mind the poor woman clinging to the strapy-thingys on the inside.

Though alarmed, she was, oddly, not scared. Not yet. Not on the boat? Well, then get back on the boat, yo. Pretty easy, right? No. One moment the boat was there, _right_ there, and then a wave came and it wasn't there anymore, but she could hear Freddie's bellow on the wind, or was that thunder?

No, that was a wave and it was _growling_ as it grew bigger and bigger until Carly was no longer floating but falling. She was falling off the side of this wave. Skiing down it in a little inflatable bathtub. This was it. She was going to die.

She shot a few prayers Upstairs, because that couldn't hurt, right? She wasn't a _regular_ church goer but she did go…occasionally…okay, she hadn't went since the third grade when Dave Hoopsier kissed her under a kumquat tree, but was that her fault? Spencer always forgot to wake her up….okay, it wasn't Spencer's fault. They'd both made excuses to get out of Great Grammy's funeral, but regular church just felt a little excessive, something only Mrs. Benson did. Freddie even had church pants, which Carly had mocked.

Okay. She was sorry about laughing at Freddie' church pants, sorry she kissed a boy and then stopped going to church. Did that make her a bad person? If she died then, like, would she get in?

These thoughts were thoughts of the doomed. As soon as Carly realized which room her thinking mind had hidden in, she chastised herself and locked that door. Winners didn't plan to fail. She would survive this. Her dad worked in the ocean, darn it. She could handle it if he could.

She got a grip and focused all of her will power on that raft, on it staying upright and above water. She still believed in higher powers and all of that, but right now she believed in life rafts a little more.

It worked. Kinda. She didn't drown anyway.

The wave didn't break, just dropped suddenly like a rollercoaster and then started climbing again—even higher. She screamed until she got hoarse. She tried to imagine being home in her bed. She held onto that raft and didn't stop believing in it until the storm stopped.

Minutes, hours? Eventually, it all stopped. The wind and the rain lessened by degrees until there wasn't any rain, and very little wind. The waves went back to sleep, and left her little orange home dancing on dark choppy water beneath a starry sky.

Freddie's boat wasn't in sight. It couldn't be or else she would hear him and Sam shouting for her.

It literally never crossed her mind that they couldn't have a boat when she did.

She had no food, no water to drink, but there was a flashy-thingie on one of the strapy-thingies and that was sending a signal somewhere, right? She was too exhausted from her fight of survival to even sit up and take a look around, her life jacket felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, like her eyelids.

She fell asleep.

...

Freddie was aware of the sound of waves breaking on rocks. He wasn't awake. Not really. He wasn't asleep either. It was emptiness. Then the thunderous crashes and hissing sprays of the sea wormed their way in and behind them came other things. His back hurt. He was against a rock and something hot and heavy was pressing him into it—a body. He opened his eyes.

He was surrounded by green and was in the shade, but the broad daylight was enough to hurt. Closing his eyes against it, he recalled the night before. Only facts came back first: the boat had capsized. He and Sam had held onto each other as they bobbed freely in the tortured ocean with nothing but lifejackets and prayers.

The storm had still been in full swing when they'd suddenly found themselves washed ashore. They'd half-pulled, half-pushed each other further in, away from the waves that'd seemed too eager to grab them again, and into palm trees bent sideways in the wind. Then the big rock found them, gave them a place to shelter from the wind.

None of it felt real, even when he began recalling the fear, the exhaustion, the pain, the way he'd been absolutely certain he would never see Sam reading again. He opened his eyes once more, slowly blinked away the blurriness. His body felt like it was part of the ground, not going anywhere, too heavy for one man to lift.

He noticed the blond hair of the body in his arms. He became truly alert. "Sam," he croaked, but it was more like a crack, which ripped its way out of his throat. God, it was so dry. It hurt to swallow. He paid that little mind, however, as he lifted stiff arms to shake Sam.

She didn't respond. He shook harder, "SAM!" She groaned, opened her eyes and he expelled all of his breath in relief. She sat up in groggy, stiff movements and looked around.

"Are we alive?" she asked, her voice a rough, dry thing like his.

"Looks like it," he said. The more he moved, the more it hurt, but the better he felt. The pain meant he was alive. He stood.

"We could be dead," she said as she took the hand he offered and let him pull her to her feet. She swayed a little and he caught her.

"We _should_ be dead," he corrected, his face screwed up as he squinted in the light, cowlicks askew.

"If we are," Sam said, "we're in hell." She grabbed her head and swayed again.

"We need water," he croaked. He turned a complete circle, looking around. They were standing beside a big rock, and a thicket of tropical trees stretched in front of them. Through it, he could see a distant beach and the sea. He stumbled around to the other side of the rock and looked. More trees, though not as many, then a bigger rock-strewn beach, then the sea with rocks protruding out of it which the waves broke on.

He climbed up on the rock and his horrifying suspicion was confirmed. He could see the entire island. He swore. "There's no freshwater here." It came out as a whisper as it hit home that they had no radio, no flares, and no water. "We're dead."

Just then there was a thud, a grunt from Sam. He looked down to see her raise a round brown thing high over her head and slam it down onto a rock once more. This time, it split open. Coconut milk went everywhere, but she was fast—managed to get a little of it in her mouth.

Licking it from her chin she looked up at him, "Maybe you're dead. But mama's not gonna to die like this."

She picked up another coconut. This time, she cracked it in one go. As Freddie slid down from the rock, she hungrily sucked milk out of the crack. She could have taken it all for herself, but she stopped and handed it out to him. He took it, did as she had done as she wandered off to pick up more fallen coconuts.

It didn't taste very good, but it was fresh liquid and that was all he wanted.

Once the worst of their thirst was satisfied, they were sitting against the rock again, eating the white insides of the coconuts. They were both aware that such a small island wouldn't produce enough coconuts to last them forever. They were still dead.

Freddie realized that Sam was crying when the first sob escaped her as she asked, "It's a miracle we've lived this long, isn't it?"

"Yeah,"

"Carly's probably dead, isn't she?"

His eyes burned and his chest hurt. "Yeah," he breathed. She broke down then. He put his arms around her. Hot salty tears filled his vision. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with guilt. It'd been his stupid idea to go on this trip. He'd had half-conceived notions of impressing Sam or something.

_Way to go, dishrag._

Now Carly was dead, and Sam was going to die. He was going to die, too, but he didn't so much care for himself. The guilt at the thought of Carly drowning alone because of him was so horrible that he welcomed the idea of his own death. But Sam was still alive, and he couldn't welcome the idea of Sam dying. Sam _had_ to live; she hadn't gotten what she deserved out of the world yet.

They sat in silence, alternating between crying and nibbling at the coconuts. He kept his arm around her. She didn't seem to mind. Each other was all they had left in the world. Freddie kept his mind from morbid thoughts of Carly by focusing on how to save Sam.

The sun started to sit and Sam tossed the hull of a coconut away and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding him tight as she made herself comfortable against him. He welcomed the embrace, returned it. He was sorry he never held her like this in the past. It was chilly when the sun was gone and the wind came in off the water. He absently rubbed her back to keep her warm.

"Freddie?" she whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for everything."

"Sam…" he breathed, a sudden swell of things unsaid pushed his breath out, but a moment later, he realized she was asleep.

"I'm going to save you." He said, and he gently pulled himself out of her arms, laid her in the sand, and got to work.

A signal fire was her best hope.

...

Carly woke. She sat straight up upon remembering everything. It was full daylight, had been for hours if the new tans lines at the ends of her shorts and t-shirt sleeves were any indication. She was thirsty, feeling a little nauseated. She wanted to be on _solid, sturdy ground._ She wanted shade. She wanted cold air.

There was no stability in a raft on the ocean. There was no shade. The breeze was too warm. There was no food, either, and no fresh water. Carly's brain registered all of this distantly, like they were things listed on a grocery list or something, tacking onto the end, very calmly, _so there was no hope of surviving, really_.

Weird thought, the certainty of death. Being young, she'd never given her own demise any thought at all. She was aware that her calmness had a lot to do with the fact that she'd never defined what death meant.

With chiz else to do, she found herself doing just that.

Death meant that she would never again see Freddie make Sam nervous enough to punch him, or Sam make Freddie hot-and-bothered enough to do whatever it was that he'd done to make her nervous. It meant she'd missed her chance to be Sam's bridesmaid at their wedding, to collaborate with the two of them about married-life jokes to do on the show.

It meant she, at twenty five, spent a lifetime without what they had, that super special someone always around and driving her bonkers—no, no, no, _coconuts_. Her giggle was the only sound but for the wind and lapping water, and she was aware of how sorely out of place it was, here on the edge of everything.

Even hope.

Seriously, there was nothing but blue sky and bluer water, heat and sunlight, no rescue. So, yeah, no hope. Real death, and at 25-years-old, too. Well, that was jank, she thought as it started to really sink in, all the subtle layers of the meaning of death.

It meant not seeing her brother or her father ever again. It meant no more carrots and whipped cream. It meant never reading that long-in-coming sex scene in the book she'd been reading, that scene she'd _known _was on the next page, but that she'd stopped reading for the sheer purpose of coming back to it later when Sam wouldn't be right there in the next bunk.

Huh. See if she _ever_ put anything off ever again. Oh, wait. She was dying. There would be no next-time chance to _not_ wait.

_That_ was even more jank. It was janked up beyond recognition. With a hard, painful pang in her chest, she missed a lot of things, and wished a lot of things. One of the things she missed was the hero in the book, and one of the wishes was that she could have read that sex scene, _at least_. Garret would have been an _awesome_ lover.

With an even more painful pang, she realized she was at death's doorstep and longing for a fictional man rather than a real one. That made her start crying, heavy powerful sobs.

She'd spent her whole life believing in love, the real epic magical kind, because believing was creating. But now she was alone and dying after twenty five years of believing and it'd never happened. If she didn't know any better, she'd think that all of her believing never created anything but a lifetime of waiting.

Waiting was jank. Waiting was jank. Waiting was jank, jank, JANK!

After several hours of crying, Carly was leaving her sadness behind for anger. She was not going to die, dammit. Not like this, after a lifetime of waiting. She wanted to die after a lifetime of _doing_.

But she was so tired, so thirsty, so dizzy for being thirsty. It was night time by now, so at least the heat and the sun was gone, the end of one full day at sea in an inflatable raft. She lay there, bobbing in silence, staring up at ink night sky, contemplating how many days it'd take. Not many, she knew. She wondered if she went to sleep now, if she'd even wake up.

She didn't miss the stars until she felt the first few drops. Rain. It took a moment for that to register. Rain—fresh water!

Within moments it was _pouring_. It was hard, took longer than she would have liked in her eagerness, but she managed to quench her thirst, and the cool fresh water felt so unbelievably good on her skin, which was tender and red from a whole day with no shelter from the sun. The rain gave her hope, just a glimmer of it, but it was enough.

She _would_ get out of this. She _would_ have a love like she read about. She said it enough that she really started to believe it, started to gather up shards of hope, courage, determination—then she saw the fin, so close to her raft it was possible to see even in the dark and the rain. She lost everything, even some pee, except for her fear. The grey fin was circling her raft.

She screamed.

...

Gibby only used two fingers when he typed, but he still got a pretty hefty word-per-minute. He liked old fashioned type writers, the kind that needed a manual haul to the left at the end of every line. _Ding_! _Zzzzzz_—THUD—_tick tick tick-tick-tick tick_. The only thing better than the rhythm of typing was the blushing-in-private, mega foxy rhythms he wrote about.

Gibby had always had a vivid and wild imagination. It made for some good times in real life, but those good times had lead him to some pretty awful ones, which in turn had led him here. To this quiet place where he could be left alone, as he preferred, where no one could bother or hurt him ever again.

While the seclusion of the island was a good way to ensure never having his heart broken again, it was also a good way to ensure he never actually had any real women to sleep with. Mix that frustration with his imagination, and what came of it was about five cheap paper-back love stories written in quick succession, instantly published, then devoured by house-wives who demanded more. At first, obliging them had been common sense (without doing the show anymore, he'd needed to make money _somehow,_) but then he actually started to get into it.

It'd taken only three short years to make a name for himself in the genre—sure it was a woman's name, but he didn't want his real name to be linked with this lady-porn anyway. Not that he didn't vastly enjoy writing it. Because he did. He loved weaving tales of epic magical love, building tension to steamy nights and sweeping love declarations.

Creating it was like believing it, which was kind of like having it in real life.

He was in the middle of his newest sex scene, was seeing things vividly in his head. The heroine had dark hair (they all did, because to hell if he was ever going to feel sympathy for a blond again) and the hero resembled what he'd look like in a world where he was blessed genetically.

He'd been hesitant, at first, to write these characters, because the hero was based on him (as they all were) and this new heroine had a few of Carly's personality traits and he didn't know if it would be weird to base one of _these_ kind of characters on her or not… but then he'd kept writing it anyway and found that it was twice as fun as the others.

He was trying to be descriptive without using the word _throbbing_ for a third time on the same page when suddenly, all of the hairs on his arms stood on end and goose pimples bloomed over his chest. (He always wrote with his shirt off.) His rhythms—both the typing one and the one in his head—were completely lost. Replaced with, what was that? Doom?

He couldn't explain it, but something was wrong.

...

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	3. Chapter 3

Laying in the dark and the rain, Carly was afraid to move. She was afraid that if she made the raft move any more than the ocean naturally moved it, than it might give away to the sharks that there was food up here. She had no idea if they knew she was here or not. She fell asleep believing in rescue helicopters—_not_ sharks.

"There's no such thing as Jaws… No such thing as Jaws…no…such…jaws-thingy…"

She dreamt of a big fish in the sky that looked down upon her puny little existence and shook its great toothy head. Then with its all-powerful voice it said, _"There's no such thing as coconuts, Carly Shay."_

_..._

Sam woke to find herself holding a ground of sand. First she felt a jolt, a lurch like when the boat had hit that dune. It was a moment that just wasn't right—a jarring chord in serene music or something. She hadn't fallen asleep alone. She'd fallen asleep with someone, feeling safe for the first time since Carly screamed that a storm was coming. Now she was alone. It was full day and Freddie wasn't in sight.

She sat up. "Freddie?"

A loud, sharp pop drew her attention to the low roar of fire. She turned to see that Freddie was out on the beach, dragging behind him a lot of palm branches as he headed towards a huge fire. In the heat of the Caribbean morning, a fire that large was just flat excessive.

"What're you doing?"

"You're not going to die like this, right?" he asked. The heat of the fire had driven his shirt away, pulled moisture out of his skin until he glistened.

She stood. The upsetting moment that came from waking up and not knowing where he was had put her in a bad mood. In the way that it always did, the sight of the nub when she was irritated only pissed her off. She marched over to him. She reached him before she realized she didn't really haven't anything to complain about—nothing to shout about, because he was doing it right. A signal fire was all there was to do.

Annoyed beyond belief at this, she latched onto the only thing she ever had, pride. She snatched the branches from him. "I'll save myself without any help from a nub like you, thanks."

Her venom surprised him, put his guard up. "What the hell, Sam?'

It was easier to be mad than to be scared, heartbroken, hungry. Mad was easy, too easy. Suddenly, everything shifted. A part of her knew it was wrong, but most of her needed something to blame, to shout about.

"Back off, Benson," she barked. "I don't need help from the guy who put us in this mess."

Hurt slackened his features. She wouldn't let herself feel bad about it. She clung to her anger. She was happy to see him rise to meet it with his own. He was going to defend himself as he always did.

"_I_ got us into this?" he echoed.

"You weren't steering the boat!" she shot back. "We might have gotten ahead of the storm if it wasn't for your nubby need to try to cop a feel!"

"I was trying to help you with your top!" he barked, "and we couldn't have gotten ahead of it—hurricanes are faster than boats!"

"I wouldn't have _needed_ help with my top if you hadn't told Carly to skimp below deck the moment an opportunity showed itself."

"You think I _planned_ on your clasp breaking?"

"I think you're a big enough nub to hope something like that would happen!"

"You can't actually believe that!"

"I said it, didn't I?" she snapped. She snorted, "You know, Carly has a stupid idea about me and you and I think you have the same idea in your pathetic loneliness." The mention of Carly in the present tense hurt. Neither had the heart to correct it, so when Freddie defended himself, he used present tense, too.

"I am not pathetically lonely! And Carly wouldn't have her stupid idea if you weren't kissing me all the time!"

"We've only kissed, like, twice!"

"_Five_ times," he shot back, "and _you_ kissed _me_ every time!"

"Only a nub actually counts kisses."

"Only a girl harboring some screwed up feelings kisses a guy repeatedly and then treats him the way you treat me!"

Sam whacked him with a palm branch. After a few well-placed blows, he managed to catch it. He pulled. She lost her balance and fell into the sand. She was quickly on her feet again and charging him in a full-body tackle.

Sam hated him in that moment. Hated him. Because he was right. She _was_ screwed up. But was it her fault her no-good parents had instilled in her an innate distrust of anyone meant to be close? Best Friend was the closest anyone was allowed to get, but he was forever nubbing his way closer with a lopsided smile and having her back when she least expected it.

He was lightening.

The thought—however insane—came to her when she rammed her shoulder into his gut and they went down hard. He was lightening. Twelve years and she never had a word for it, but that was it. Lightening.

The thought of him, and the danger he presented, scared her, it scared the chiz out of her, but the presence of him illuminated everything, chased away the darkness filled with unknowns—even if it was just for the briefest flash. Those flashes were filled with the world and the monsters were gone.

Inevitably, though, the darkness was back and the thunder was booming overhead and whatever assurance that last flash gave, the unknowns lurking in the dark closed back in and so she longed for the lightening to return, except that her fear of the damage it could do had her half hoping it never would. But it always did.

Yeah. He was her lightening.

He was harder to pin down now that he had sailor muscle, but she was pissed, and he'd spent the entire night rubbing two sticks together like Tom Hanks, so she still won. With him flat on his back as she sat on his stomach, she looked down into his eyes—felt that stuff that made her feel vulnerable and her survival instincts kicked in. Kill or be killed.

She slapped him across the face. Why she went for a slap instead of her trade mark punch, she'd never know. Weirdly, she was just that mad or something. Nothing said it like a slap. She put her usual force behind it, and her hand stung as his cheek went all red. He screamed—he always screamed, the nub.

Freddie wrestled himself out from under her. He stood and stumbled away, holding his face. He left Sam by the fire and sat in the sand in the shade along the tree line. He stayed over there until his face was no longer hot and throbbing. He was exhausted from the long night building a fire and her slap felt like his head had exploded on one side. Geezus, it was easy to forget how strong she really was, how most of the time, her painful punches were meant to be playful so they only held half their power.

He'd been slapped like this before, back in college when a girlfriend had, like a champion, put up with the somewhat-intimate way he bickered with Sam for months, but she hadn't been able to deal with seeing one of Sam's unexplained kisses. And unfortunately it had been the steamiest of them all. So while defending himself, he might have hit the nail right on the head by declaring, _you're just pissed because you know it means I don't love you_! WHAM; his first bitch-slap.

So when Sam delivered him his second, he knew what it meant; he'd nailed it on the head again—she _was_ harboring some screwed up feelings for him. Sam had feelings. For him. Granted, he'd always known. It was just the kind of thing he would rather do anything—_anything_—than think about. Mainly because he was certain where things would go if he dealt with it; and while part of him longed for that, most of him was afraid he wouldn't survive it.

She'd probably be like a praying mantis and rip his head off after. Sometimes he thought it wouldn't be a bad way to go, but the rest of the time he was acutely aware that he was only twenty-five, and he wanted to live a long, full life. So he dated other women, attempting to find love that felt safe but wasn't boring, while she dated other men and occasionally caught him in a dark corner and laid one on him.

If five times in twelve years could be called occasionally.

He sat in the sand, watched her gather fuel and feed the fire. At the rate it was burning, and without anything to use to cut down the trees, they wouldn't have a fire for very long. Of course, they would run out of coconuts before they ran out of fuel, so it didn't really matter. Basically, if they weren't rescued in another day or so, they were dead.

So he might as well let her bite his head off, right?

...

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	4. Chapter 4

Heat woke Carly. It was day again, but earlier than the first time she'd woken up in the raft. With a sickening drop, like the ocean was a dish sink with the plug pulled and she was the first down the drain, Carly remembered the fins.

"No such thing as jaws," she croaked.

What answered her was a loud, piercing chortle, a kind of giggle, a song,_ a dolphin_. Before she even had time to put it together, she heard a loud splash, another dolphin call, and something bumped into her raft. She sat up. The fin she'd seen before was there—with friends—and they were circling her.

Dolphins!

...

Experience with Sam's angry-side kept Freddie at a safe distance from her for a few hours. She came to sit in the shade after a while of pretending to be busy with the fire. She sat away from him and when it came time to eat, she prepared the coconuts and gave him his share without looking at him.

He remained quiet the whole time, at war with himself. The side of him that was certain he was going to die screamed at him to make a move. The rest of him was too used to denial, too used to pretending nothing was there, too used to being safe. It kept telling him that this was not the time or place. That it would be taking advantage of her or something.

Then the sun went down for the second time and she sat down in the sand by the fire after feeding it. He watched her silhouette for a moment, then stood and went to sit beside her.

Sam was relieved when Freddie sat beside her in the light of the fire. He'd been staying away for too long. He was rubbing his face, though it couldn't still hurt all this time later, and chuckling, "You pack a wallop when you're pissed."

"I'm sorry about what I said," she mumbled. "It's not your fault."

He said nothing, just moved closer and put his arm around her. She leaned into him.

"I don't want to die," she said. She might have been saying she didn't want to see a movie or something.

"You won't," he said, the sound of it ringing empty. So painfully empty. "They'll see this fire and come. You'll keep doing the show with Carly. By this time next year, the two of you will be signed to star in all the funny movies and primetime shows making a couple of million bucks per appearance."

"If we're making millions, our producer will be making billions." Sam said with a nudge into his ribs. Freddie made a noncommittal sound. He actually felt her stomach rumble below the hand of the arm he had around her.

Sam drew in a deep breath and sighed, "What I wouldn't do for a ham sandwich right now."

"I just want a peppy cola." Freddie said. Sam laughed and for just a second he felt better. Then he realized how little time he had left to hear her laugh.

"It's six, by the way," Sam said.

"What?"

"Six kisses," she said. "You can't _not_ count the fire escape kiss just because it was an agreement. It was the first."

"I am counting that one," he said, flabbergasted they were even talking about it. The kisses were a taboo subject—that embarrassing first one, doubly so. The kisses weren't even supposed to exist.

"Then not only are you a nub who's counting kisses," Sam said, "but you're an idiot who can't count." Her usual scathing tone was like they were just hanging out on a couch or something. Freddie preferred it to the dreary, doomed tone of their situation. He held up a hand and began ticking off the kisses on his fingers.

"There was the fire escape of my building, the lock-in at Ridgeway, outside the restrooms of the Crab Shack, the parking lot of that Cuddle Fish Farewell concert, and after our first Live Airing of iCarly on the comedy channel."

"There were two in the Crab Shack." Sam said.

Freddie frowned, remembering that she'd kissed him, turned to go, then kissed him again like she wanted one for the road. It was that one that was steamy, and that one that had been witnessed. "Oh, yeah," He rubbed his face, "I guess Sylvia bitch-slapped that first one out of me."

Sam laughed again, fuller than last time. The sound of it made Freddie believe, for the first time since the storm, that he _would_ see her reading again, preferably in something like that little blue bikini, and preferably in bed.

"And _I_ did not kiss _you_ every time." Sam continued, "_You_ kissed _me_ on the fire escape _and_ at the Cuddle Fish Concert."

"I did not!" Freddie scoffed.

"Ya did, too, ya nub."

"Like hell I did—you grabbed me and stuck your tongue down my throat."

"You leaned." She defended.

"…Doesn't mean I kissed you," Freddie said so softly she was surprised into looking up at him. Her face resting against his collar bone put their mouths close as he looked down at her. "It just means I wanted to." He said even more softly.

He was going to do it, kiss her, take her if she let him. He wasn't even thinking about how close death was, just about how close he wanted her, how close he'd always wanted her. But then she was pulling away, standing, walking around to the other side of the fire.

Not like this.

Freddie's lips trembled and his eyes burned and he damned himself for a coward, and a pathetic dishrag and true-to-the-core nub. It was supposed to happen. But not like this. He'd missed his chance to be hers.

...

Okay, the sun was down again. Another day of sun survived—though, Carly honestly wasn't sure if she could make it another day. Having always been of the snow-white complexion, she'd always needed high SPF, but the hurricane had scrubbed away all protection she'd slathered on while aboard the boat. The result after two days was that her skin was lobster red and extremely painful to the touch—like, extremely. She might as well have laid flat in a skillet, her skin was actually _burned_.

But good things were happening now. She called them the bumps.

Her dolphin friends had started bumping into her raft with gusto. At first, she'd wanted them to stop—it felt like they were trying to tip her over—but then she realized that the bumps were propelling her through the water. She'd laughed—a sound so ecstatic that it might have sounded a little like dolphin language, and she hoped that whatever she'd said hadn't been an insult.

It must not have been, because they were still bumping.

She plunged her hands into the sea, made deep hard strokes attempting to help. She didn't want the dolphins to think she was lazy or something. With her stomach twisting painfully with hunger, the _real_ kind of hunger that Americans knew nothing of by principle, she tried to take her bearings based on the stars, which were out once more, but she'd always been bad at astronomy. The big dipper wasn't so easy to find as everyone pretended it was.

Eventually she decided the dolphins didn't need her to navigate, anyway. By then, her arms were tired of paddling. Instead, she patted them encouraging on the side whenever she could, and she kept up a constant out-loud ramble about how sweet this was of them, about how she never liked seafood, about how she totally really truly did write a check to that foundation attempting to stop the dolphin slaughtering that was happening in that one place that was all over the news once.

She fell asleep telling them the plot to _The Little Mermaid_ and how she'd always believed, even as a kid that the movie suffered for its lack of a dolphin character with a _real_ _person _personality.

"I mean, seriously," She slurred with exhaustion, "if a _flounder_ could talk like a person, why not a fish of _real_ intelligence, ya know?"

...

There were seven of them. Just seven. They were the last of the coconuts. Fishing was out. This piss ant island provided nothing they could fashion into a spear and anyway, what the fat-cake did they know about spear fishing? Freddie's stomach twisted painfully from two days of intense heat and nothing but a few swallows of coconut milk a day followed by scanty coconut shavings. He was so hungry for something _real_.

Sam was sitting in the shade, staring out at the horizon. A watched pot never boils and a watched horizon never shows rescue. But there was chiz else to do on this island. With his head pounding so hard that his ears had high pitched sounds with each throb, Freddie gathered the coconuts in his shirt and joined her in the shade by the rock—for all intents and purposes, this rock was their home now.

"This is the last of them," Freddie said, dumping them into the sand in front of her. "Here you take them."

She scoffed, looking down at them and back out at the water, "We'll share."

"No, I'm not even hungry." Freddie said, lowering himself down to sit with his bare back against the cooler side of the rock. "You take them."

"You _are_ hungry, Fred." She said, "Take your half."

"Sam, no, I want you to have them." He said. He sat with his knees up and his elbows on them. He had one hand in his hair, bicep unintentionally displayed in a triangular frame of arm and head. "Ration them, they'll last you another two days or so and-"

"Quit being an idiot." She cut in. She finally looked at him. Her face was hard and meaner than ever. "I'm not going to sit here with coconuts and watch you starve to death."

"Dehydration will get me first," he corrected drily, looking out at the sea.

"No it won't!" she barked. "Take your half!" she kicked his share over to him. He watched them bump against each other with hollow-watery sounds. He swallowed. Man, his throat was dry.

She gathered her coconuts up. She'd taken only three, leaving him four. He kicked the fourth over to her. She pretended not to see it.

"Sam, I need to tell you something." He croaked.

"Take your half, Freddie." She commanded because he hadn't reached for them other than to kick the biggest one her way.

"Sam, I always" he continued, pretending not to hear her, "I mean—I meant to…. I never thought I wouldn't have a chance to—OW!"

A coconut had connected with his shoulder. "Take. Your. Share. Freddie." She said, throwing a coconut with each word. Every one of them was a square hit, hard and painful.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Sitting with his back to a rock, he couldn't dodge them. He sprang to his feet as she scrambled to scoop up more ammunition against him.

"Quit throwing coconuts at me while I'm try to tell you how I feel!" he bellowed.

She threw the two coconuts she'd picked up, turned and charged into the trees. He chased her, caught her and turned her to face him.

"Sam, you always did this—you always ran from the big stuff!" he cried. He was still walking, forcing her to walk backwards.

"I never ran from anything, Benson." She said, looking at anything but him for a moment, but then narrowing her eyes and adding, "Except maybe you're nubby—"

Her back bumped into the trunk of a tree. It wasn't any kind of impact but it took her breath all the same. It made her forget whatever lie she'd been attempting to make.

"You did run," he said, holding her against the tree, "You never let me in, even once. Why?"

She shoved him away then, and cried, "You already _were_ in, Freddie!" her voice cracked and she continued thinly, with a punch at her own chest, over her heart. "Deep in—too deep! I don't know how it happened but one day you just _mattered_ and I couldn't let you know, because if you knew—"a sob broke in, "you'd just fill in the rest of the spaces, or something, until there was no room left and then—"more sobs, "and then you would leave or… and then there would be nothing and I would—I would,"

_I would cease to exist._ She didn't say it, couldn't say it. She'd never even let herself think it before. It was too big. No one actually loved like that. Not in real life.

But now they were dying—dead already as far as they were concerned. Though any mention of Carly would still be present tense to them, they'd already begun speaking of themselves in the past tense. They were dead and so it didn't matter.

But if she was dead, how could she still feel this afraid? Sam felt exposed and vulnerable and she was terrified by it.

She was still leaning on the tree, pressing on her eyes where tears of fear and regret burned. Then she felt Freddie standing close and his thumbs were wiping away the salty water on her cheeks.

"I wish you had trusted me, Sam." He whispered wetly. "You could have trusted me. I would have made everything okay," his voice cracked and he wrapped his arms around her. He should have let her know she could trust him. He would have—should have—made her life beautiful.

She was sobbing into his neck, and he had his arms around her. He scooped her up and went back to the rock. They sank down to the shaded and palm-strewn sand and he held her tight, crying as well.

Sam didn't want to be here. She wanted home, her comfortable bed, air conditioning, a ham sandwich, some crispy potato chips, a berry blitz smoothie, something trivial to complain about. She wanted to finish that book she'd been reading. She wanted to tell Carly that rhino joke she'd been sitting on for a few days. She wanted stupid things to laugh about. But she had none of those things.

She didn't want heat, or sand, or salt, or coconuts. She didn't want hunger, or pain, or fear, or exhaustion. She didn't want to cry in front of Freddie. She didn't want to be so helpless, so weak. But that was all she had. She was dying too soon. Too soon.

"At least we're together," he said, lifting her face to hold in front of his.

She looked into his eyes and wanted him in no uncertain terms. He was her lightning, illuminating, chasing away the darkness of approaching death. With his hands holding her face, his dark eyes looking into her, his body against hers, the unknowns were gone. There was nothing but the clear, unarguable fact that he was there, he was hers, and he was safe and wonderful and home.

When she kissed him, he kissed back. When she touched him, he touched back. They forgot the island and their doom together. His strong arms encircled her, held her tight as he moved urgently inside of her. She was lost in him, the feel of him, the taste of him, the thrills and throbs of him. She wasn't afraid, she wasn't hungry, she wasn't even Sam but half of something else, something bigger called Sam and Freddie that was always meant to be.

It was always meant to be. But it wasn't meant to be like this.

It was meant to have been in Sam's bed, Sam's, because it was bigger and better than Freddie's. They were meant to be in her white Egyptian cotton sheets in her sun-filled but climate-controlled room with all of those windows filled with the LA skyline. There was meant to be a trail of cloths from the kitchen, none allowed in the bed. They were meant to be able to laugh, even argue a little bit, as they made love.

Instead there was sand, a big rock, too much sun, clothes rearranged instead of abandoned, and if there was anything more than pleasure sounds, there was crying. There might have been crying the way it was supposed to be, but that was where the laughing and arguing would have come from. This crying, though, it wasn't so funny.

Because it was meant to be, but not like this.

Finished and sitting with their backs against the rock, his arms around her as she cuddled against him, neither were crying anymore. They wanted to, because it just wasn't fair that they'd been allowed to mess up this badly, that they weren't allowed a second chance. Because this was what was right, the two of them together. There was nothing more right, and they'd wasted all those years. But the tears were dried up, they'd cried themselves out; they were accepting their fate.

"What do you think it's like?" she asked.

"What?" Freddie asked.

"Dying," Sam sighed. "What happens after we die?"

"I don't know," Freddie said. He felt a twinge of fear. This was another one of those topics he'd always avoided dealing with. Another aspect of his life he'd always thought he'd have years and years to sort out. All he knew for certain was that he was definitely more than a body, that he had a soul and figuring out anything more had always been too much to worry about.

"When I was little," Sam said, "my dad told me that we go to a heaven of our own creation."

She sat up, looked at him. "If we _can_ choose where to go, or whatever, if we _can_ make our own afterlife—let's make ours together."

Freddie's eye stung with the threat of tears, but he smiled, "Yeah. Together," he repeated. She was looking at him, straight at him, not looking away, not narrowing her eyes or grimacing. It was helping him realize just how big and round her eyes were. His chest hurt as he elaborated on all the things he wanted.

"You and me, no boats, no ocean, no islands, no sand."

She laughed, agreed, "Indoors—with ham and peppy cola."

"And books and staying in bed together all day,"

Sam kissed him, and he kissed back eagerly. How many more could he get before her lips were gone?

She broke away, "and I win every fight."

He laughed, wrapped his arms around her. "Uh, no, Sam, you can't when _every_ fight."

"I already do anyway," She said with a shrug.

"Which means I deserve to win some in the afterlife!" Freddie cried.

"What kind of heaven is it for me if I have to _lose_?" Sam laughed.

"What kind of heaven is if for _me_ if _I_ have to lose?" Freddie echoed.

Sam laughed, gave him a look with one eyebrow up. "Would it really be losing to keep me happy?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. His stomach cramped painfully in hunger but he ignored it. "I don't know," he said, "What're ya like when you're happy?"

She giggled. Whoa, he liked the sound of it. Too bad he was so exhausted—he'd have her again right now if he had the strength.

"You're not going to win, Freddie," she said, her lips near his and she whispered it—a tease, the kind of low whisper fit for a world below sheets, not harsh sun. "Mama's always going to win."

Yeah. They could keep this up. This pretending nothing was wrong as they painted all the problems right out of the next life. They could talk, argue, tease, and kiss each other to death and straight into their heaven. It was so much better than the hunger-induced headaches, the cramps, the heat, and the exhaustion of reality.

Sam could hear his heart, feel it under her jaw. "You'll have a heart beat that I can feel like this," she said.

She had a leg thrown over his. His hand was on her thigh, "You're legs will stay this smooth without you ever having to shave again."

Her heart fluttered. God, how well he knew her. She craned her neck to kiss him, and they kissed until their mouths were too dry and their lips began to crack.

...

It took a minute for Carly to realize what the presence of waves meant. It wasn't another storm—the sky was too clear for that. Her raft rose up, then down on swells fit for surfing. Wait. Surfing was only done near—

LAND!

The dolphins were leaping around her happily, like they were eager to share her joy. She cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed, "THANK GOD FOR DOLPHINS!"

...

Gibby had thrown the windows wide open to enjoy a breeze off the water and had just gotten comfortable in his hammock for the night and had conjured up the first few lines of what would be the love speech at the end of the book, when the sound of dolphins cut into the serenity of the night.

With a mind to see the dolphins playing in the moonlight—he'd totally work it into the book—he hoped out of his hammock, and hurried outside onto the beach. The night was clear and silvery, the stars ablaze. He couldn't find the dolphins, but he could hear them—out beyond the swells. They might not come closer. Oh well, still a perfect night.

He sat in the sand and looked out at the sea. The beach curved out to a point, making one end of his little crescent-shaped island. Not for the first time, and not in any definite way, just in a general wordless longing, he wished he had someone to share this with, someone not fictional. He was well used to this feeling; it was what perpetuated the plots of his books.

But he didn't want books. He wanted life.

Then he saw the dark shape on the waves, heard a sound mixed in with the dolphin chatters, something far too much like a human laugh.

He stood, watched as the shape washed ashore over at the point. He ran to it. As he drew nearer, he saw a thin figure stumble out and fall to the sand, a person. The storm two days ago, which had rearranged a few trees on his little island, rushed back to him.

Holy chiz! He ran harder.

"Hey!" he cried, "Hey, are you okay?"

The survivor had been lying face down, and when he came close enough to see that it was a woman, she flopped over onto her back and peered up at him.

"_Heeeey_," she slurred, then went limp.


	5. Chapter 5

They were looking up at the stars, side by side in the sand, fingers laced, slurring ideas for the afterlife back and forth. Sam sat up abruptly. Freddie did, too. He'd heard it—a shout.

It came again, "HELLOOOOO!"

They scrambled to their feet and circled around the rock for a look at their signal fire. A boat was anchored nearby and people were coming ashore in a motorboat.

Could it have been that easy? Freddie tried to remember dying, tried to remember agreeing with Sam to start the afterlife with a motorboat and the coast guard. He looked at her, and she shook her head. She couldn't remember either. Maybe they'd agreed to forget the pain.

Walky-talkies were crackling, a medical team was sweeping the pair of them onto the motorboat, asking stupid questions like What Year Is It? Who's The President of the United States? Freddie answered them like a nub.

When the paramedics started repeating that, _you're all going to be okay_, _you guys and Carly are going to be okay_. Sam started to cry and almost laugh.

"She's alive?" Freddie looked really confused. He turned to Sam, touched her face. "Are we alive?"

A paramedic laughed, and the motorboat whisked them away, and radios crackled with familiar voices and it started to seep through the cracks like the coconut milk. No one died. Carly washed up in that life raft onto some rich writer's island, apparently, and he'd called in an hour ago with news that she was unconscious and severely sunburned, but alive, and that a good way to find them would be to hone in on "_the signal_."

They were all three going to be okay, no casualties in this shipwreck.

Now they could do it right!

"But, wait, how did you find us, again?" Freddie asked.

Their rescuers traded looks, frowned, looked back at him, "You're signal."

"What signal?" Freddie asked. They could only tell him that they'd been able to track a signal and if he didn't know what it came from, they couldn't tell him. Freddie's headache was still there, but he didn't realize that the high-tone that'd come in pulses (or beeps, rather) had stopped. He was a little distracted by Sam.

Once on the Coast Guard's big boat, they'd been given each a gurney, but once left alone to sleep for the rest of the journey home, she'd moved onto his. Now he was getting delicious goose-bumps from the soft, delicate way Sam was running her fingernails through his hair. He pulled her closer and they got a little tangled in their IV tubes before they fell into the induced sleeps.

**Three Months Later**

Freddie caught Sam unawares, planted one on her. She blindly sat the jar of pickles on the counter, wrapped her arms around him. Freddie never cared for the taste of pickle juice, but on her tongue it honestly wasn't so bad. She pulled away, shoved him in the chest. That was for surprising her—and anyway, he wasn't supposed to be here.

But he wasn't going to let her get away. He grabbed her in another kiss, this one lifting her up onto the countertop. She broke away, laughing, this time put a foot on his chest and pushed him away. He grabbed at her ankles, but they slipped from his grip, then she was running from the kitchen and he was chasing her.

She left clues where she was going, a belt here, a slip there, boy shorts in the bedroom doorway. He caught her by the closet and hauled her over to the bed, falling in a fit of kisses and laughter. The laughter gave way to noises deep in his throat. He loved when she ran her nails through his hair like that.

He took his lips back, let her keep his breath, let the tip of their noses bump. He smiled with one side of his mouth, "Let's make it just like this,"

"You mean the afterlife," she sighed dreamily with her eyes closed.

"Just like this," he squeezed her, hands going to her hips, the skirt of her dress rustling. "We don't have to change a thing to make it perfect," he said.

"Well, there is _one_ thing we might have to change." She said fingers combing through his hair, finding cowlicks.

"What?" he asked against her neck as his hands found their way up her skirt. She loved the way his fingers played over the tender skin of her thighs. It left her voice breathy as she said,

"We wouldn't have guests waiting to see us get married in ten minutes."

Freddie gave a peek at the alarm clock, leapt up, swore. She was up, too, laughing. They darted out of the bedroom. He was adjusting his tie, smoothing his hair. Her skirt was rustling as she scooped up the abandoned boy shorts and slip. She looked from one to the other, then to him, raised an eyebrow, and tossed the boy shorts back to the floor.

Sam was going to marry him going commando in her wedding dress.

He _really_ wished they didn't have this wedding thing to do.

...

The ceremony ran as smoothly as one of their shows filled with laughter and tears, the reception was a good time full of dancing and booze, and then the new Mr. and Mrs. Benson were riding away in a car with tinted windows so no one could see what they were getting up to on the way to the airport.

Carly watched until the car was out of sight and then stepped out of her shoes with a weary sigh. It was late, her bed was calling her name and she was _so_ there. She turned to go.

"Wait just a minute, Coconuts," Gibby said. He called her that now. When she'd asked why, he'd said it was something to do with the loopy things she'd said when she washed up on his island. She couldn't remember it, but he recounted some pretty whacky dialogue—most of which had made it into his latest book. She hadn't read it yet. No one had, he wanted her to be the first.

He took her elbows; his touch raised goose pimples all over her.

"I have something for you," he said, and he pulled an advanced copy of his book from inside his jacket. The cover was embarrassing as was fit for the genre. She read the title, _Coconuts_, and smirked. He flipped it open and showed her the dedication page, _for Carly_.

"I was hoping you'd let me know what you think," he said, "Since it's all about you."

"Me?"

His head bobbed. He flipped the pages through his finger and thumb. "I think it might actually be literature. It's about a girl who thinks the world is hilarious and makes people laugh with her about it."

Carly's blood ran hot through her veins. Two months ago, she was in a life raft vowing she'd live a life of _doing_, not _waiting_. Two months ago, she was waking up in a hospital and seeing her friends alive and together and she was vowing she'd find that, what they had. Two months ago, Gibby was smiling at her and making her stomach feel like she was reading one of his books.

But despite all of that, she'd fallen back into the easier way—_waiting_. Waiting for Gibby to make the first move, because she inevitably talked herself out of acting first, letting her insecurities, her fears, control her. Just wait, they told her. If it is truly meant to be, it'd happen, right? No need to put yourself out there…

Suddenly, she understood how Sam and Freddie could have been so stupid for so long. Because it was easier to run than face the thing that might destroy you.

But now she was tired of running, of waiting. She was going to face it; she was going to _do_ something about it.

So as Freddie emerged from the bathroom of a honeymoon suite in Paris to see a whole lot of Sam-skin, and nothing _but_ Sam-skin stretched across the bed, Carly could feel Gibby breathing beside her in bed as she read the book he'd written for her, about her, aloud.

He'd said it was all about her but she thought it was really more about a sweet guy admiring a girl like her from afar; how she'd always seemed so confident and happy to be on her own that he'd never considered she might be just as lonely as him, that she might be just what he was looking for—it was a love letter two hundred and fifty pages long and it had the best love scene she'd ever read. But maybe that was because when she put the book down it didn't end.

She understood now that there was no avoiding it, especially when it was there all along, hiding, calling itself something else. Regardless of how it happens—be it over twelve years and five kisses, or nine years and one book—when friends fall for each other, it isn't easy to surrender to the risk. It's way easier to find excuses to get out of it, to miss out on it.

Then if you're lucky, you'll get trapped on a deserted island and fight over the last bit of food, or wash ashore so dehydrated that you think an old friend is a dolphin who stole your pants.

On top of the Eiffel Tower, Freddie kissed Sam to stop an argument about mothers who invited themselves to honeymoons but mostly he just kissed her because Sam was hot when she was winning a fight, maybe she _could_ win them all in the afterlife.

Back home, thinking over the last three months, Carly was laughing at the world, at life, at the way people can be sometimes, and she was making the man sharing her shower laugh too.

Yeah, love was just coconuts.

...

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